Issue Position: Social Security

Issue Position

It's time we had someone in Washington with the courage to stand up and call the $4.5 trillion that is missing from the Social Security Trust Fund a national disgrace.

Hard-working families and businesses paid that money into the fund with their Social Security tax payments. They believed that the money went into the fund and was safely held there to pay for future hard-earned retirement benefits. But Congress looted the fund to pay for their extravagant spending bills -- the tune of an astonishing $4.5 trillion so far. And it's continuing everyday.

For the first time in more than three decades, senior citizens received no cost-of-living-adjustment increase in their Social Security payments in 2010. But Congress and the President continued to rack up record deficits through reckless spending -- and members of Congress took their pay raises.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

It's time to protect Social Security funds. It's time that members of Congress stop spending Social Security money as their own checkbook.

A lockbox law to stop the looting is a good first start. But it's a little like closing the barn door after the horses ran away. The money also needs to be put back starting now. I find it hard to believe that with a $ 3.8 trillion budget plan Congress couldn't find an immediate $1 billion payback as a start.

Members of Congress should make an honest start. While families are hurting to make ends meet, Congress should roll back and give back some of the pay raises they've taken over the years and the free mail privileges. And I think we can hopefully look forward to a successful completion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as those expenditures decrease that money should be earmarked to go directly back into the Social Security Trust Fund.

I will stand up on my first day in Washington and introduce a bill to make sure this money goes back to the hard-working seniors who are depending on it.

Source